The American museum of Asmat Art at the University of St. Thomas held its 2016 Spirits of Summer Asmat Gala on July 20 in Woulfe Alumni Hall in the Anderson Student Center.

The gala is an annual fundraiser for the Bishop Alphonse Sowada Endowed Chair of Pacific Art.

The cost of the Sowada chair is $3 million dollars. Before the gala, the university needed just more than $1.5 million to complete the total cost of the chair. The money is used to continue the American Museum of Asmat Art at St. Thomas and educating people about the Asmat people and culture.

The art comes from the Asmat people of New Guinea. Asmat is a large island in the Southwest Pacific and is one of over 800 cultures in New Guinea.

The gala featured three Asmat artists who gave a carving demonstration and drum performance.

Art history graduate student Elizabeth Madden, who also works as assistant to the museum’s clinical faculty director Eric Kjellgren said bringing the carvers to campus in person could help correct misconceptions about the culture.

“I think it’s important to hold things like the gala but also educate people about Asmat because not everyone does know about Asmat,” Madden said. “You can see it happening in front of your eyes, so it’s art in contact, and I think that’s just bringing them here and showing everyone what they can do. (It) not only corrects misperceptions, but shows everyone they’re still around, and we need to know who they are.”

Bishop Alphonse Sowada, who died in 2014, was the leader of a Catholic order called American Crosier Fathers and Brothers and went to Asmat in the 1950s to convert the people to Christianity. Sowada created both the Asmat Museum of Culture and Progress, located in a village in New Guinea, and the American Museum of Asmat art.

“I think having sort of the largest collection of Asmat in North America not only is a ‘wowing’ experience for people who come in but also just a little foot in the door that we’ve heard of the people now so they’ve interacted at least a little bit with it,” Madden said.

The collection at St. Thomas features over 2,200 pieces. The Crosier Fathers and Brothers gave the school the collection of Asmat pieces in 2007, but the pieces were not displayed until the opening of the Anderson Student Center in 2012.

Noura Elmanssy can be reached at elma7206@stthomas.edu.